Education and the Aim of human life

III

The Dawning of a New Age

The synthetic vision of the Vedas and the Upanishads forcefully restated by the Bhagavad-Gita Gita, was later broken up into opposing philosophic systems, although attempt were made from time to time to recombine them into some image of the original intuitive unity. One of these attempts is the large synthesis of the Tantras.

Sri Aurobindo has taken up again this unifying endeavour and reconciled opposing views of the three great Acharyas. He has shown that the main Vedantic conceptions of existence are not mutually exclusive, but rather represent aspects of the total truth. According to him, each of these views is valid and none completely true without the others. Without pretending to sum up his thought in a few words, I shall try to make clear its general trend.

Each religion, each system has seized one aspect of the Absolute and set it up as the sole truth. But every aspect is true, relatively and partially, and is false when it puts itself in opposition to the others. It is a great tragedy that the understanding of man cannot seize any particular truth without at once opposing it to its complementary truth which is as valid as itself.

The Supreme is at once the One and the Many; He is simultaneously immanent and transcendent; He is at once personal and impersonal; and yet He is beyond all the formulations. The Jivatma, the individual self, is a reality the same time distinct from, related to and one with the Supreme.

Nothing exists but the Supreme. If He is all. He is all the contraries, all the opposites, even while He remains the Absolute and is beyond everything. All that exists has come out of Him, remains in Him, remains Himself. The separation is only an appearance. It is He who lives, feels and thinks behind a limited consciousness in all beings. The

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manifestation of this world out of the Supreme is accomplished through a double movement of descent and ascent. The descent is an involution, a veiling, a limitation of consciousness by successive steps. Thus the various worlds or planes of existence were brought into existence with physical matter as the ultimate densification. The ascent is an evolution, that is an emergence from matter and a development of the powers of consciousness concealed in matter. The limitation of the supreme Consciousness, its burial in matter in order to evolve a complex universe by a progressive emergence of the powers of this consciousness, is the key to the universe. Matter is the same in essence as consciousness; it is consciousness veiling itself to itself. In a way, matter is spirit condensed; there is no essential difference between the two, all the powers of the spirit are buried, asleep in matter. The aim of evolution is to reveal them, to manifest them.

If that is so, the world is not the contrary of God, it is not a place from which the Divine is absent. He is here, present everywhere. It is He that lives, feels and suffers in every one of us and who, in us and through us, reveals progressively His attributes: beauty, knowledge, power and love. The world is not a creation out of nothing, outside of God; it is not an illusion destitute of reality (even though the view that we have of it be necessarily limited and false); no more is it a place of trial wherein created beings have been placed in order to expiate a fault that they have never in their own persons committed. It is rather a field of experiment where one of the innumerable possibilities that exist in the Infinite is actualizing itself on a gigantic scale. No doubt other worlds exist, have existed or will exist, which will unfold other possibilities.

Our universe bears the stamp of separatism. This initial cleavage in the consciousness has permitted the multiplicity to lose the underlying unity. Thus has come about ignorance by the loss of global knowledge and a lack of comprehensive vision. Hence also separateness, i.e., the

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illusion the individual has of being separate from all and of having the power to oppose all - what man calls his liberty and takes pride in. Ignorance and apparent liberty imply the possibility of self-deception, and consequently error, weakness, opposition, disharmony - in a word, evil. Evil is the price paid for apparent liberty. This illusion of separateness and liberty is, no doubt, necessary for a time; it marks a stage in the development of self-consciousness. By it, the, cosmic realization will attain a depth, a richness, a power which would not otherwise have existed. The fall into the abyss will have permitted the conquest of the highest summits.

As each movement of consciousness has inevitably to develop all its consequences and to bear its fruits, separative ignorance has reaped an ample harvest, - falsehood, hatred, sorrow, death.... But these attributes have not an inevitable character. They are consequences - but not ineluctable consequences - of the veiling of consciousness that we call involution. The birth of consciousness in what is apparently inconscient matter and the subsequent evolution will redeem matter and reunite it with spirit. Harmony it possible here in the material world; matter is capable of containing and manifesting the glorious perfection of the spirit in a play of ever-increasing joy.

Thus understood, the present imperfection of our world receives a satisfactory explanation. It is in reality transitory, tied to only a phase of cosmic development. The universe is not static, it is essentially dynamic, in constant evolution, not only from the physical point of view, but also from the subtler viewpoint of consciousness. And this evolution has a direction; it aims towards a progressive manifestation of the powers of consciousness. Matter, on the physical plane, pressed by the forces of the vital and mental planes, of those worlds of life and thought which along with the world of matter constitute our universe, has organized itself and produced life. Animate forms have developed progressively in the vegetable and animal kingdoms throughout prehistoric

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times. In the animal, the forces of the mental plane have successfully fashioned an instrument permitting them to establish contact with matter: thought is born in the physical world. Consciousness buried in the substance of the mineral kingdom has thus traversed by a slow and multiform ascent the stages of the two other kingdoms in order to arrive at man: Homo sapiens. Intelligence is in full bloom. Man is the brightest product of our universe.

But has he the character of a work finished and final? Vain indeed is he who would dare to affirm such a thing. Man is simply the present term of this evolution; he is not the ultimate term. In truth, there is no reason, except to probably in man's conceit, why evolution should cease with him and not produce a subsequent type, which will differ from him as much as he differs from the animal, or the animal from the plant.

This next step in the ascent of embodied consciousness will be taken under the pressure of forces of a realm higher than the mental. Sri Aurobindo calls it simply the Supermind.¹

We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind. In that case. the unconquerable impulse of man towards God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality presents itself in its right place in the chain as simply the imperative impulse by which Nature is seeking to evolve beyond Mind, and appears to be as natural, true and just as the impulse towards Life which she has planted in certain forms of Matter or the impulse

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towards Mind which she has planted in certain forms Life.... The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be thinking and living laboratory in whom and with who conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God?²

For some time it was held that the evolution of living species proceeded by a slow and gradual progression of one species out of another, without any sudden jump. But modern biology has a different explanation. The transition from one variety to another occurs by an abrupt leap, a genetic mutation, and this may at times be the case also for the species, even though the fact has never been actually witnessed. There is probably a period of secret preparation when the various factors arrange themselves in order allow the mutation or the sequence of mutations, as well as a period of adaptation and flowering out that follows the mutation

Sri Aurobindo asserts that we have arrived at a great crucial moment in human evolution, where the descent of new powers of consciousness and their establishment on the earth have begun to occur. The present world crisis is nothing but the break-up of the past indispensable to the forward movement. On the crest of an evolutionary wave man has to yield place to a new type of being.

Can one form an idea of what the new being is going to be? It is no doubt a difficult task. Man is probably incapable of forming a true picture of what his successor will be. He would be prone to imagine him as a glorified man, a being in whom the characteristic human faculties (intelligence, will, memory, etc.) will reach their zenith: a superman, in the Nietzschean sense. But this would be contrary to the facts of evolution. We may therefore be certain that the new being will be nothing of the sort. His characteristics will be a new quality of consciousness, new powers of the spirit, and not development, not even a greater perfection of the existing

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faculties. These will not disappear; but the first place will belong to the highest.

In any case, the word "progress" has a meaning, even though it be not the simple and childish one given to it by the Positivists of the nineteenth century, and even though it be not simply a state of technological development and increase of material well-being, as it is still generally understood. The faith in man's unlimited perfectibility, the fundamental optimism of man's heart and mind are completely justified.

Terrestrial evolution has so far proceeded under the pressure of nature, without any participation of the beings drawn along this evolution. But man has now attained a position of full spiritual responsibility and is aware that he has the power to influence, for good or for evil, his own destiny. The next step should be conscious and deliberate. In this Sri Aurobindo sees an indication that the new being will be evolved in man, rather than out of man. A confirmation may be found in the fact that, of all the earthly creatures, only man is a dissatisfied being: there is in him a divine urge to aim higher, to surpass himself.

The recognition is now fairly widespread that the old remedies are of no avail, that the lights that have guided man so far are failing him. A change in the form of government or even in the social system will not help him in any way. The upheaval that is required is of a deeper kind: it is the appearance of a new consciousness that is called for, and the subsequent transformation of human nature. There must grow in a few individuals at first, then in an increasing number of people, the urge to overpass the old limits, to find in themselves or above themselves a new light, a new consciousness, a new guiding principle of knowledge and action, and a decision to abide by it, to let this new consciousness transform their life and nature. Then only can be removed the obstacles that block the way and humanity enter into a new creative age of civilization. No material prosperity, no advance of physical science, no religious revival, no social revolution can replace the necessary and

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inevitable spiritual transformation.

In his major works. The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity³, Sri Aurobindo has studied at length the nature of the Supermind and the various aspects and stages of the transformation he foresees for humanity. I have to limit myself to quoting and summarizing the passages in which he describes his vision of the ideal society. They are taken from the last chapters of The Human Cycle. The stage described is not too far ahead as to be inconceivable for us. Indeed we may take it as the ideal which Sri Aurobindo places before us, the next step we have to take in the long ascending series of steps leading to a Divine Life upon earth. It may inspire us in our endeavour to find an issue to the present crisis and give us the strength so that we may not falter.4

Analyzing the growth and decay of societies, Sri Aurobindo points out that the radical defect of all civilization has been the neglect of the spiritual element, the soul which is man's true being.

Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active and clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no more than a certain distance; afterwards he flags and tires for want of a real self-finding, a satisfying aim for his action and progress. These three things do not make the sum of a complete manhood; they are means to an ulterior end and cannot be made for ever an aim in themselves. Add a rich emotional life governed by a well-ordered ethical standard, and still there is the savour of something left out, some supreme good which these things mean, but do not in themselves arrive at, do not discover till they go beyond themselves. Add a religious system and a widespread spirit of belief and piety, and still you have not found the means of social salvation. All these things human society has developed, but none of them has saved it from disillusionment, weariness and decay. The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive doubt and sceptical

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impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline. Modern society has discovered a new principle of survival, progress, but the aim of that progress it has never discovered, - unless the aim is always more knowledge, more equipment, convenience and comfort, more enjoyment, a greater and still greater complexity of the social economy, a more and more cumbrously opulent life. But these things must lead in the end where the old led, for they are only the same thing on a larger scale; they lead in a circle, that is to say, nowhere: they do not escape from the cycle of birth, growth, decay and death, they do not really find the secret of self-prolongation by constant self-renewal which is the principle of immortality, but only seem for a moment to find it by the illusion of a series of experiments each of which ends in disappointment. That so far has been the nature of modern progress. Only in its new turn inwards, towards a greater subjectivity now only beginning, is there a better hope; for by that turning it may discover that the real truth of man is to be found in his soul... .5

It will be said that this is an old discovery and that it governed the old societies in the name of religion. But that is only an appearance.

The discovery was there, but it was made for the life of the individual only, and even for him it looked beyond the earth for its fulfilment and at earth only as the place of his preparation for a solitary salvation or release from the burden of life. Human society itself never seized on the discovery of the soul as a means for the discovery of the law of its own being or on a knowledge of the soul's true nature and need and its fulfilment as the right way of terrestrial perfection.6

Therefore a complete change of outlook is necessary so that the whole society be constructed around the human soul and the soul's needs:

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The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond. which after all it need not have left if it had no divine business here in the world of physical, vital and mental nature. It will therefore regard the life, mind and body neither as ends in themselves, sufficient for their own satisfaction, nor as mortal members full of disease which have only to be dropped off for the rescued spirit to the away into its own pure regions, but as first instruments of the soul, the yet imperfect instruments of an unseized divine purpose.7

It is Sri Aurobindo's contention that if we accept the truth of man's soul as a thing entirely divine in its essence, we have to accept also the possibility of his whole being becoming divine, and this in spite of Nature's first patent contradictions of this possibility, her dark denials of this ultimate certitude, and even with these as the necessary earthly starting-point.

The possible godhead of man because he is inwardly of one being with God will be our one solitary creed and dogma.8

And as we regard man the individual, we shall regard to man the collectivity.

... as a soul-form of the Infinite, a collective soul myriadly embodied upon earth for a divine fulfilment in its manifold relations and its multitudinous activities.9

We shall regard every human society, nation, people or other organic aggregate from the same standpoint, as subsouls, means of a complex manifestation and
self-fulfilment of the Spirit, the divine Reality, the conscious Infinite in man upon earth.

Thus all parts of human life, all his physical, vital,

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dynamic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, intellectual, psychic activities will also discover the road to their own accomplishment and become instruments for a richer, fuller and happier life, and finally for a divine living.

Education will embrace all knowledge in its scope, but will make the whole trend and aim and the permeating spirit n not mere worldly efficiency, but self-developing and self-h finding. It will pursue physical and psychical science not in order merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and to use them for material human ends, but to know through and in and under and over all things the Divine in the world and the ways of the Spirit in its masks and behind them.

The aim of art will not be merely to present images of the subjective and objective worlds, but to see these images with the significant and creative vision that goes behind their appearances and to reveal the Truth and Beauty of which iis things visible to us and invisible are the forms, the masks or the symbols and significant figures.

The aim of ethics will not be to establish a rule of action whether supplementary to the social law or partially corrective to it, the social law that is after all only the rule often clumsy and ignorant, of the human herd, but to develop the divine nature in the human being.

In our sociology we shall treat the individual

...... from the saint to the criminal, not as units of a social problem to be passed through some skilfully devised machinery and either flattened into the social mould or crushed of it, but as souls suffering and entangled in a net and to be rescued, souls growing and to be encouraged to grow, p souls grown and from whom help and power can be drawn by the lesser spirits who are not yet adult.10

And this growth is a free and spontaneous emergence of consciousness from within. It cannot proceed under repression, suppression and compulsion. Nothing will be acceptable,

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to the individual and the society, that seeks to imprison, to wall in, to repress, to impoverish. The aim always will be to let in the widest air and the highest light.

A large liberty will be the law of a spiritual society and the increase of freedom a sign of the growth of human society towards the possibility of true spiritualisation."

The aim of economics will not be .

.. to create a huge engine of production, whether of the competitive or the co-operative kind, but to give to men - not only to some but to all men each in his highest possible measure - the joy of work according to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly, as well as a simply rich and beautiful life for all.12

In politics, our spiritualized society will not

... regard the nations within the scope of their own internal life as enormous State machines regulated and armoured with man living for the sake of the machine and worshipping it as his God and his larger self, content at the first call to kill others upon its altar and to bleed there himself so that the machine may remain intact and powerful and be made ever larger, more complex, more cumbrous, more mechanically efficient and entire ... -13

Men and nations will be regarded as souls and group souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human individuals and collectivities, group-souls meant like the individuals to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the whole race in the common work of humanity. And that work is to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realize spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature,

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The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine within himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing measure of freedom a necessity of the being as it develops and perfect freedom the sign and the condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus sees in himself, he sees equally in all others and as the same Spirit in all. Therefore too is a growing inner unity with others a necessity of his being and perfect unity the sign and condition of the perfect life. Not only to see and find the Divine in oneself, but to see and find the Divine in all, not only to seek one's own individual liberation or perfection, but to seek the liberation and perfection of others is the complete law of the spiritual being.... He who sees God in all, will serve freely God in all with the service of love. He will, that is to say, seek not only his own freedom, but the freedom of all, not only his own perfection, but the perfection of all. He will not feel his individuality perfect except in the largest universality, nor his own life to be full life except as it is one with the universal life. He will not live either for himself or for the State and society, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much greater, for God in himself and for the Divine in the universe.14

It can be said that such a spiritualized society will be a true inner theocracy,

...not the false theocracy of a dominant Church or priest-hood, but that of the inner Priest, Prophet and King. It will reveal to man the divinity in himself as the Light, Strength, Beauty, Good, Delight, Immortality that dwells within and build up in his outer life also the kingdom of God which is first discovered within us. It will show man the way to seek for the Divine in every way of his being, sarvabhdvena,15 and so find it and live in it, that however - even in all kinds of ways - he lives and acts, he shall live and act in that,16 in the Divine, in the Spirit, in the eternal Reality of his being.17

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This at least is the highest hope, the possible destiny that opens out before the human view, and it is a possibility which the progress of the human mind seems on the way redevelop. If the light that is being born increases, if the number of individuals who seek to realise the possibility themselves and in the world grows large and they get nearer the right way, then the Spirit who is here in man, now concealed divinity, a developing light and power, will descend more fully as the Avatar of a yet unseen and unguessed Godhead from above into the soul of mankind and into the great individualities in whom the light and power are the strongest. There will then be fulfilled the change that will prepare the transition of human life from present limits into those larger and purer horizons; the earthly evolution will have taken its great impetus upward and accomplished the revealing step in a divine progression of which the birth of thinking and aspiring man from the animal nature was only an obscure preparation and a far-off promise.18

Is this to place our ideal too high? Listen again to Sri Aurobindo:

To follow after the highest in us may seem to be to live dangerously, to use again one of Nietzsche's inspired expressions, but by that danger comes victory and security. To rest in or follow after an inferior potentiality may seem safe rational, comfortable, easy, but it ends badly, in some futility or in a mere circling, down the abyss or in a stagnant morass. Our right and natural road is towards the summits, 19

I maintain that the nation which will accept this vision of the future, and make it a living ideal in its national and international life will be the leader of the New Age.

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